Netflix's New Reboot Of Iconic '80s Sitcom Officially Earns Stellar Rotten Tomatoes Score

Published Sep 25, 2026, 11:11 AM EDT

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

A Different World is winning over a new generation of critics.

The new Netflix series, which premiered on September 24, is a reboot of the iconic sitcom of the same name, a spinoff of The Cosby Show which ran for six seasons between 1987 and 1993. Several original A Different World cast members reprise their original roles in the reboot, which follows Dwayne Wayne (Kadeem Hardison) and Whitley Gilbert's (Jasmine Guy) daughter Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon) navigating her first year in college. Also returning alongside Hardison and Guy are Darryl M. Bell, Cree Summer, Ajai Sanders, Karen Malina White, Charnele Brown, Glynn Turman, Dawnn Lewis, and Jenifer Lewis, among others.

The cast of series newcomers in the reboot also includes Alijah Kai, Cornell Young IV, Chibuikem Uche, Kennedi Reece, and Jordan Aaron Hall.

Now that the show has premiered, Rotten Tomatoes has aggregated enough critics' reviews for it to earn an official score on the Tomatometer. While the score could fluctuate as more reviews are added, at the time of writing, 14 different critics have weighed in to give the reboot series a solidly Fresh score of 79%.

This is a considerably better start than season 1 of the original sitcom, which has a dismal score of just 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. While Rotten Tomatoes obviously didn't exist in 1987, this score does reflect the tenor of reviews at the time. The show was heavily retooled going into the better-regarded season 2. The ensemble cast was shaken up considerably, losing original cast members Marisa Tomei and Marie-Alise Recasner, adding Summer and Brown, and upgrading Bell and Sinbad to series regulars.

While not every season of the original series has an official score, it is officially the second highest-rated between the two series. Below, see the Rotten Tomatoes scores for every season of either series that has enough aggregated reviews to land on the Tomatometer:

Season	RT Score
Season 1 (1987)	11%
Season 6 (1992)	100%
Reboot Season 1 (2026)	79%

Individual critics' scores have trended toward the middle, with the show receiving multiple scores of 6 out of 10 (or equivalent) from critics, including ScreenRant's own Nick Bythrow. In his A Different World review, he praised how layered the characters get as the show goes on but admitted that in the second half of the season, "the series starts to lose traction with what made the first five episodes so strong."

Meanwhile, while the season has received one strongly negative score of 2 out of 5, it has received twice as many strongly positive scores, namely a 4.2 out of 5 and a 4.5 out of 5. This indicates that critics are overall leaning positive, which is reflected by the official Tomatometer score, which is 29% above the 60% threshold at which a project can be considered Fresh.

It remains to be seen if audiences have a similar reaction to A Different World, as there are not enough user reviews for the show to have earned an audience score on the Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter. However, if they respond to the Netflix sitcom just as well as critics, or even better, there is a strong chance that the show will be renewed for a second season, which could potentially be just as much of an improvement on the first as the original series' sophomore season.

Cast

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  Cree Summer

  Freddie Brooks

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  Jasmine Guy

  Whitley Gilbert

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  Kadeem Hardison

  Dwayne Wayne

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  Cornell Young IV

  Shaquille